In both Canada and the United States, Indian agents were responsible for implementing federal Indian policy. They were the government's representatives on reservations and reserves and, as such, they wielded great power over Native peoples, even to the extent of usurping their traditional political authority, suppressing religious practices, and transforming social roles.
In the United States, Indian policy was transmitted from a commissioner of Indian Affairs (operating, after 1849, from the Office of Indian Affairs in Washington DC) through regional superintendents, to agents, who were responsible for a single tribe or a group of tribes. The agents, in turn, supervised teachers, blacksmiths, farmers, and other agency employees. In the early nineteenth century in the U.S. Great Plains, agents like John Dougherty, who was in charge of the Upper Missouri Agency from 1827 to 1837, were roving ambassadors who strived to maintain peace and to obtain Indian lands. In the second half of the nineteenth century agents took up residence on their designated reservations and promoted the government's assimilation policy.
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